Ditching Sense lets the hardware's best qualities shine through.

So far, 2013 has brought with it a number of changes to Google's Android strategy. More and more apps and services are being separated from the core of the operating system to allow for easier updating. Google didn't take advantage of Google I/O to announce a new version of Android, and what we've seen of the rumored version 4.3 suggests that it will be a relatively minor update. And Google is working with its partners to sell versions of their high-end smartphones that run stock Android instead of those partners' respective Android skins.

The roster of so-called Google Play-edition phones doesn't replace Google's tailor-made Nexus products, but it does augment them—if you don't like the design of the Nexus 4 or its lack of LTE, these handsets are intended to give you the stock Android experience running on the best hardware anyone is making today. Samsung's Galaxy S 4 and the HTC One are the first two phones on offer, and we'll look at the One here.

Whether you prefer the stock Android experience to HTC's Sense and its add-ons is largely a matter of taste, but there are some things about the Google Play edition of the phone that are objectively better, worse, and just plain different from the standard edition. It is to these aspects of the phone that we'll be paying the most attention. For more on the standard edition of the One, our review of it is here; more detailed information on Android 4.2 is here.

The hardware

Enlarge/ The AT&T logo on the back is the only thing that differentiates the standard One from the Google Play edition.

The phone's shell is nearly identical to the subsidized, locked versions of the One you can go out and buy from your carrier. The only external difference between the two phones is the AT&T logo etched onto the back of the standard One.

Otherwise, this is the same handsome aluminum body and 1080p IPS touchscreen that we saw in our One review earlier this year. Whether you prefer to hold the One, the Nexus 4, or the Galaxy S 4 in your hand will depend on which material you prefer—metal, glass, or plastic—but we can say that the One remains one of the nicest Android phones on the market right now. It feels rock solid in your hand, and unlike the glass-backed Nexus 4, the One shouldn't be as prone to scratches and scuffs.

If you're coming from any other phone, the one thing that might take a little getting used to is the way the One's edges are angled inward slightly toward the display. Most other phones and handheld devices that come through our offices—the Galaxies, iPhones, BlackBerries, and so on—have flat edges, and the first day or so I spent with the One the phone felt just ever-so-slightly off. You get used to it (and to the phone's height—it's slightly taller than either the Galaxy S 4 or the Nexus 4) in short order, but it's really the only thing I can think to take issue with. Otherwise, the One still feels excellent, regardless of the software it's running.

The software

Enlarge/ Combine the HTC One and the Nexus 4 and you might just have one of our favorite Android phones.

Andrew Cunningham

These phones' main draw is their promise of stock, up-to-date Android, and on that front the Google Play edition of the One delivers. All of the standard One's splash screens have been replaced by the same understated Google logo as is found on the Nexus, plus a boot animation specific to Google Play Edition phones (it trades the Nexus' glowing, multi-colored X for multi-colored circles that swirl around each other in an X-shaped pattern).

If anything, the version of Android 4.2.2 on the HTC One looks even more "stock" than the Google Play edition of the Galaxy S 4, which changes the lock screen a bit to accommodate flip covers and gets rid of some gradients throughout the OS to better take advantage of that phone's AMOLED display (since AMOLED pixels display black by shutting all the way off, a black background consumes a tiny bit less power than a dark background with a gradient).

Enlarge/ The Google Play Edition of the One lacks the onscreen software buttons of the Nexus 4. Double tapping the capacitive home button invokes the application switcher.

Andrew Cunningham

There are two big visible changes compared to the Nexus 4 Android experience: the first, obviously, is that the onscreen software buttons (part of the Android design spec for phones since version 4.0) are absent in favor of the One's capacitive home and back buttons. This frees up a few extra pixels on the One's screen unless an app calls for the legacy Android Settings button, which shows up at the bottom as it does on the standard One. The second is that a Beats Audio toggle has been added to the sound settings. When using the phone's built-in speakers the setting makes a positive difference, and on the stock One the Beats optimizations make the highs a bit less tinny and the lows a bit more bass-y than in the standard version.

Otherwise, the experience of actually using the Google Play edition One is identical to using the Nexus 4. Things are a little different under the hood, though—where Google manages both the operating system kernel and the UI on the "true" Nexus devices, it controls only the UI in the Google Play edition devices. This leaves the kernel itself in the hands of the OEMs, who will need to update it with their drivers and optimizations every time an Android update is issued. As we mentioned last week, this probably means that the Google Play edition phones won't receive their updates as quickly as the proper Nexus devices; however, without having to update their own custom skins and deal with carrier meddling testing, the updates should still come to the Play edition phones more quickly than the standard versions.

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites